Vanceboro native Rev. Robert Worthington has lived a storied life: playing in the famed Ryman Auditorium alongside country music greats, having a vision from God during a USO tour in Vietnam that caused his life to pivot. Secondary to his ministry, music has been a defining part of Worthington’s life.
“I’d been interested in music all my life. My mom was a pianist … my sister was a pianist … My mom led the music and singing in churches my dad pastored,” Worthington remembers.
While he loved music, Worthington said he never tried playing himself until after he got married in 1960. His wife, Minnie, is appropriately named, considering the time they would spend in Nashville.
“I learned a few chords from a friend of mine, James Lilly, who is one of those local musicians who had played guitar with Clyde [Mattocks] for years in different bands,” Worthington said. “He had been playing since he was a boy. I was already like 20 years old. I started playing with him and a couple of years later I guess I started learning how to play lead guitar a little bit.”
Worthington traded a boat for an old Martin guitar. The first guitar he bought was a Gretsch, and that’s what he was playing when he moved to Nashville.
“My wife was from Murfreesboro just south of Nashville. She wanted to go back and be with her mom and dad and I wanted to play music, so that was kind of a perfect thing for both of us,” Worthington said. “So we moved in with her mom and dad for a while and started getting out in the music stores, meeting different people and musicians.
“One day the guy that ran Hank Snow’s music store said, ‘Are you interested in a job playing guitar?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I would be.’ So he told me about Hank’s son, Jimmie. He had gotten saved and had married Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper’s daughter, Carol. Jimmie was the only child that Hank and Minnie had. They got married, got saved, got in the church, and they evangelized for nine years and he was building a new church on the edge of Nashville, in Gallatin.
“I went over and went to church and introduced myself. He asked me to bring my music out and I started playing with him and Carol. We stayed with them about three or four years, I guess.”
Worthington explained that Jimmie Snow, having Hank Snow as a father, of course had a background in country music. His dad had been one of the musicians who had taken Elvis on tour when Elvis was just starting out. Snow’s church in the Nashville area attracted country music people. Connie Smith, Johnny Cash and Billy Walker were some of the regulars.
“Jimmie got a TV show started called ‘Grand Ole Gospel.’ We recorded that on Thursday night, and he used Grand Ole Opry people to be the guests,” Worthington said. “So we got to meet a lot of people.”
At that time, Worthington played a number of shows on the Grand Ole Opry and recorded with many performers while Minnie sang with the Carolee singers, who provided backup vocals on the Opry in the Ryman for many years. Worthington had the opportunity to play with Jerry Reed, Joe Edwards and a lot of the greatest Nashville musicians. The Worthingtons became close friends with the Snows as they traveled, ministered and performed together.
“We went to Vietnam in 1969, January, on a USO Entertainment tour. While we were there, God called me into the ministry,” Worthington remembers. “One night God gave me a vision and I knew God was right there. I couldn’t see Him, but it was like he was right here. He showed me basically what he wanted me to do. So I told Jimmie, ‘When we get back to Nashville, I’m going to resign my work in the church and the TV program, and I’m going to be going into full time ministry.’ He thought maybe I fell and bumped my head or something. He didn’t think that’s what I needed to do, but he said, ‘You have my support.’
“I was doing what I wanted to do: I wanted to be a guitarist,” Worthington remembers. “And I wanted to make my living doing that in music. So when God dealt with me about ministry, I was a Sunday School teacher in church and had done youth pastor work there, but that wasn’t my biggest interest. My biggest interest was music. So I prayed and asked the Lord to take that out of my heart, because it consumed my life. And the Lord did.”
Worthington goes so far as to say he had been “hooked” on music.
“I loved all kinds of music. But as a Christian I was raised very strict. In the strictness that I was raised in, they believed if you liked anything other than straight hymn-gospel type music, you were not a Christian on the level you should be. So there was some ‘at odds’ with that, even though we stayed in the church,” he said. “When I got out to Nashville, I realized there were people in the church there who didn’t view music the way I did. They viewed music as ‘this is how we make our living … it’s what we do.’
“I was obsessed with wanting to be the best musician that I could possibly be. By the time I’d go to bed, and music was just in my head, it wouldn’t stop. And I would get up and pick up the guitar and sit there and play,” Worthington said. “I embarrassed myself, really. Because people would come to see us, and a lot of times I’d be sitting there with my guitar and we would be talking and I would be playing whatever because I was more interested in that than what they had to say, I guess. It’s just in you and pulls you deeper and deeper. So that’s why I asked God to take that part of it out.”
When the Worthingtons came home from Vietnam, he immediately preached a three-and-a-half-week revival, which he said was very unusual even in that day.
“About 45 people accepted God as their personal Savior. And that vision God showed me when he called me to preach actually came to pass. I only recognized two people I knew in the vision, and that Sunday, those two people came to church, and they usually did not. That Sunday they accepted the Lord Jesus Christ. They were sitting on the same pew, the same end of the pew, that God had shown it to me like two or three months before.”
The Worthingtons moved back to Vanceboro and took a pastorate of an independent church on the edge of town. They stayed there two years and then Worthington joined the Church of God as statewide evangelist for four years. Then they built the church formerly known as The West Vanceboro Church of God (now Overflow Worship Center). That was 48 years ago.
Worthington then used his musical talent mainly in church and camp meetings. The Church of God had five camp meetings across the state at the time.
“While evangelizing I’d always carry a guitar and they’d want me to play some instrumental songs. And I kind of opened up what I was going to do with a song and then went right into my message. It opened doors for me to maybe get into churches I wouldn’t have been able to go,” Worthington said.
Worthington is quick to credit his fellow musicians from Vanceboro and the surrounding area.
“There were a lot of good musicians to come out of this community. Guys who could have been in Nashville if they had chosen to go … they were that good,” he said. “Bluegrass and country style. You always learned something from everyone you’re playing with. They have their own style of music so you kind of pick up something they’re doing because you like it. I didn’t go to music school … I didn’t go to college for music. That’s how I got in it and how I progressed in it over the years.”
Rev. Wayne Flora, who has been a friend and ministerial colleague for many years, recognizes Worthington’s talent, saying, “Pastor Worthington, though modest about it, was a regular in Nashville’s country music recording studios in the early years before answering the call to ministry. He was a close friend to many of our favorite recording artists of the ‘60s and ‘70s. He had perfected Chet Atkins’ ‘thumb style’ picking (Atkins himself inspired by Merle Travis), and his Rickenbacker guitar never sounded so classic and soothing as when he played it!”
Worthington sums up his career and relationship with music succinctly: “My music has been in the church and for the church. It’s the only way I wanted to use it.”
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